Wal-Mart and Apple Battle for Turf — The retail behemoth isn't happy about the iPod maker's plans to offer movie downloads through iTunes. Has Wal-Mart met its match? — The guy from Bentonville, Ark., surely isn't on any of Hollywood's leading man lists.

Reports: Apple to hold special event on September 12th — Based on reports from European Apple enthusiast websites and last night's YourMacLife radio broadcast, Apple is in the process of inviting members of the press to a special event for new products, to be held on September 12, 2006.

Exclusive: Movie Downloads on iTunes By Mid-September — Coming soon to a Mac or PC near you: Movies on iTunes. My BusinessWeek colleague Ron Grover has exclusive details about how how Wal-Mart, as the largest seller of DVDs — it sells about 40% of DVDs produced — is unhappy at the prospect …

iTunes To Have Movie Downloads This Month — Rumors have been swirling for weeks (see here and here) that Apple will soon be selling full length movie downloads on the iTunes service. This morning, Business Week is stating, based on unnamed sources, that the the service will launch by mid-September.

A First Look at the TravelDock Z500 — We were the first to tell you about this upcoming dock, and we now have some exclusive pictures straight from the COMEX Convention Brochure (thanks to one of our members from Singapore) . This is one of the accessories we ZVM owners have been waiting for!

Efficiency v Belonging: The Real Heart Of Social Tools — Ryan Carson has poked at an interesting hornet's nest in his recent post, Why I Don't Use Social Software, leading to a spate of concurring voices, especially Nick Carr, but supported by Phil Edwards, Cloud Street, Rob Hyndman, James Robertson, and Greg Linden.

Language Wars — An old friend emailed me to ask: … Ah, an excellent question, simultaneously impossible to answer and very easy to answer! — Sorry, I should stop speaking in riddles. A while ago I wrote an article called Lord Palmerston on Programming in which I claimed …

MySpace driving more retail traffic than MSN search — New Hitwise findings indicate that MySpace sent more US traffic to online retail sites last week than MSN search, the third largest search engine on the web. That's big news, as it's tangible evidence that youth oriented online social networking …

AOL Targets API v1.0 for AIM Phoneline by Year's End — SANTA CLARA, Calif. - AOL, a division of Time Warner, plans to release version 1. of the application programming interface (API) to its AIM Phoneline voice over IP (VoIP) application by the end of the year so that any developer can tap …

Over 50-Million Marketplace downloads served — The Xbox PR team just released some interesting data that I think some of you may find interesting. Check these numbers out! — The Xbox Live Marketplace just passed 50 million downloads. That is double the 25 million mark from just three months ago.

Two pieces in Business 2.0 — Blogging for big bucks and The New York Times' digital makeover — are remarkable for what they reveal about how much publishers now make. Dig... - BoingBoing: "on track to gross an estimated $1 million in ad revenue this year". — TechCrunch: "$60,000 in revenue every month

America's Most Wired Cities — With most of the U.S. technology industry focused on the East and West coasts, you'd think the best place to get online would be San Francisco, or perhaps New York City. But Atlanta tops Forbes.com's survey of America's most wired cities.

Google Image Labeler — Google released the Google Image Labeler game. The idea is that you will be labeling images along with a random partner, in real-time. When you both find the same keywords, you score points and advance to the next round. A high-score table shows who scored the most points.

Pioneer planning BDR-103 HD DVD/Blu-ray combo drive — Samsung got our hopes up and then dashed them. Same with LG. But ever since Ricoh announced its "smart" blue laser diode that can recognize what type of disc has been inserted and adjust the beam accordingly, we've been cautiously optimistic …

Intel expected to cut thousands of jobs — update Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini is expected to announce a massive layoff as soon as Tuesday that could eliminate as many as 10,000 jobs, CNET News.com has learned. — The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker, having suffered several …

TrackMeNot fools search engines — In the wake of AOL's stunningly ill-conceived decision to publicize the search habits of hundreds of thousand of its users, as well as reports of various search engines employing user-profiling, we're seeing more Web tools emerge aimed at helping users hide their tracks — or baffle their trackers.

Firefox 2.0 beta 2 boasts enhanced look, features — Mozilla released Beta 2 of its upcoming Firefox 2 browser for developer review Aug. 31, emphasizing that it is being made available for testing purposes only. The release contains a number of new features, as well as some enhancements to look and feel.